Greetings, Yesterday (after some searching), I found some studio portraits and decided to scan the negatives. I learned many things ... (a) dust scans *very* well (b) after removing the dust from the negatives, some dust (or odd defect) will always still remain (c) Photoshop lets me see more defects than the scanner preview does (d) the software _likes_ to go back to some defaults that *it* has chosen for me Wash, Rinse, Repeat!! Enough with the background ... here's the question ... In the scan preview, I see a huge shift in color values and luminosity depending on the selected image area ... and since "what you see is what you get" ... I would like to have better control of this ... or get the scanner HW/SW to stop _helping_ me with artistic matters in areas where it has no competence. Does anyone have an idea why this is happening? The side by side comparison was obtained by using "Print Screen" and MS Photo Editor ... "Print Screen" -> "Edit" -> "Save as New" -> "File" -> "Save As" ... [some details about the scanner] The scanner is an HP Scanjet 3970 digital Flatbed Scanner -- 8.5 x 11.7 inches; 2400 dpi optical resolution; 48-bit color; TMA handles 35mm strips or slides. BTW, I bought it as "Factory Reconditioned" from geeks.com for about $25 plus S+H. [in closing] Sorry that I haven't visited as often as I would like -- I guess the other distractions were more powerful -- not better ... just more powerful. LOL MGD